ram mahalingham

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Culture Gender

Engineering schools in India have a high enrollment of women engineers. In my previous research, I examined how extreme female neglect affects the psychological well-being of men and women in India (see Mahalingam, 2007b; Mahalingam & Balan, 2007; Mahalingam & Jackson, 2007; Mahalingam, Haritatos & Jackson, 2007). Historically, Indian culture favors sons. Indian girls have to work hard and be resilient to overcome such systemic gender discrimination. This discrepancy is particularly evident in a male dominated field such as engineering. Women face the dual pressures of holding up culturally prescribed gender roles while also developing a professional identity as engineers. We conducted a multi method study to explore resilience and professional identity development of women engineers in India. We identified that John Henryism is strong protective factor in coping with discrimination, stress and depression and positively relates to psychological well-being.